In recent years, the term "hybrid mail" has grown with increased acceptance as the business and technical communities have found better and more efficient ways to utilize the mail stream not only in the United States, but across the global marketplace as well. Hybrid mail is a creature of the evolution of technology and the mail stream. Where once a mail piece was created locally and then dropped into the closest available mailbox for eventual delivery to a remote location, now the entry points into the mail stream are virtually unlimited. Thus, the creation of the hybrid mail piece.
With the introduction of computer based stand-alone kiosk devices, some greeting card manufacturers are now offering users the means to personalize messages for a selected greeting card. These systems produce a personalized greeting card that is turned over to the sender to finish before being placed into the mail stream. However, the blending of hybrid mail and the production of finished mail pieces such as addressed and coded greeting cards, business reply cards, or other forms of correspondence has not occurred.
One of the key elements to the importance hybrid mail is the ability of the user to get the finished mail piece to its intended destination not just more quickly, but also at a cheaper cost. Additionally, if the mail piece is to cross borders so that two separate currencies are involved in the transaction, there must be a way to efficiently charge a customer in local currency while franking the mail piece in the currency of the remote location; otherwise, the delicate balance of cost, time, and convenience will be upset.
A disadvantage of the prior art is that there has not been an effective marriage of the various art forms required to produce an automated process for causing data processing systems to produce a mail piece from an extensive catalogue of options, transmitting the newly created mail piece to a remote location and then finishing the mail piece remotely while preparing local billing in respect of the service conveyed.
Thus, an objective of the present invention is to provide a cost effective means of delivering a finished mail piece to its ultimate destination with the look and feel of a locally assembled product. The advantage is that the person receiving the mail piece at its final destination will receive a piece that is timely, printed locally in the local language, and franked locally despite having origins that might be quite remote.